the new cover international airport in the very heart of moscow. visiting the general hospital in fallujah is like living it was a nightmare. children with two heads toomas malformations missing limbs and macao been unbearable little they say every family here is sheltering or hiding

a deformed monstrous child. who couldn't. get away and the grandmother you know how could my daughter cries all day long it but she hopes to see her daughter get better. but. i deeply affected i leave the city with its newborn monsters. we head for baghdad on the banks of the tigris. to. baghdad can be translated as the garden of peace. but it's a bitter fragile peace the patrols are iraqi wearing uniforms supplied by the u.s.

the army is divided by political religious and tribal conflicts everyone fights for his own count. the president is kurd the prime minister shia and the parliament is run by sunnis. in paradise square opposite the royal mosque stands a concrete pedestal. here once to the absolute symbol of power a statue of saddam hussein. on april ninth two thousand and three it was torn to the ground and the united states believed it of wonderful. nine years have passed the square is empty and the city appears to be in a state of siege. oh is that our passenger alley

a theater director back from exile in paris waited for a long time to see his enemy fall and return to his native city. where i was thrown in prison and when i got out i was given five days to leave baghdad and iraq jamie to. put folly the combat continues. and is through theater that he hopes to win it his method is to reinvest the public with a sense of resistance and a taste for life. i know that out. today i see a country filled with wasn't the overriding color in the city is khaki the color of soldiers but it was i see young people with no future men and women deprived of any feeling of citizenship figure on people have forgotten their rights and their duties. as if they were lost but i completely lost. not. more of them to be doing

a shoulder bit more than it. in baghdad no one knows who the enemy is anymore sunni's shias islamists christians each with their armies and militia each fighting the other. nine out of us i know some of your guys who joined al qaeda just to get some money. so out of the hardened. of several al qaeda gives them money whereas the government abandons them by the thumping of laws. paid to kill here on that. show belt so they've ruined their futures their lives and their families find out oh my while home. might for nothing because.

syria khaldiyeh an orthodox and armenian churches have become choice targets. al qaeda assassins and sunni and shia fanatics agree on nothing except only fixing the christians they accuse of being western crusaders. baghdad is a raising its illustrious christian past. checkpoints abound every hundred meters crossing baghdad is a permanent obstacle course. and although i think iraq is a battlefield for an array of foreign forces. iran supports the shia brothers while saudi arabia age there's the sunnis. and as for the month i live in alabama you sunny district. in two thousand and six i was all for. it was subjected to rocket

fire at least fifty rockets falling on us every day. it never stopped. you know me the streets were filled with corpses and there was fighting everywhere to show out of you know that i deserve a new the battles raged for seventy two hours you know. everyone was fighting. i stand and bodies became prey fit to be devoured by stray dogs that my little girl saw dogs eating the dead which i had never seen before in my life packet which has left me ritual from just prophetically up. living in baghdad ming surviving attacks but it's also an everyday battle. in the capital of the world's third biggest oil producer the electricity system works for just a few hours a day. the best business in town is selling generators.

for khalid my driver a visit to the barber after ten days on the road should be a moment to relax a moment of peace but nothing is that simple. yes quite simply hell here sheer hell. thousand of it's not a normal life like other people have around the world. may god act to improve things what do you say to the good of will know for sure god is good that. having. been. so hard she is the schoolteacher she's invited us to.

get out of the. how have you got through it as a woman. i grew up in email on your head. first the war with iran then the embargo and the two american intervention i see. a little but the first in one thousand nine hundred and the second in two thousand and three. for the around war my brother was arrested and there was just my dad to take care of the family all those girls had no work my father ran a small business. we barely grown up when the embargo strangle the whole country can you imagine no fruit or vegetables meat we couldn't afford and fish even more so. it's only today that i can buy but we lived in safety the women could move about without any problem we had peace but in poverty i think that there's anything that that's really done i was. almost in the sort

of end of my wife is developed but as we have guests i can drink we may be poor but we still have a sense of hospitality. of doing a sunni and a shia for the rest couple today war and religion have also imposed by hundreds on love. as the lights go out once again the neighborhoods back up generators take over i've. measured the. none not one thing that we are hearing. on shia my husband is sunni must have had now after the war the two religions can't intermarry anymore and that's and it wasn't the case before and what was important was that people loved each other and what's the distinction between shia and sunni of sydney it's shameful treating people this way in iraq with all muslims there must be. so what

a muslim man asks for the hand of a muslim woman according to islamic tradition by faith and that's all but i think how it was at the end of the war that this division appears shia sunni. but i guess now we've come to threats as head how does a sunni then marry a shiite is the worst thing as yet but then what if the alternative is to get divorced or da you know if you don't agree to get divorced you risk death you could think you're going to youngish if not in our neighborhood they shot a woman in front of her husband and children for the unique reason she was shia and he was sunni except you know she. this morning i'm not just leaving baghdad i'm fleeing baghdad. but the city gates the soldier who checks out passports tells us yet another attack a scar to the capital. another

checkpoint on the road to babylon we present our passports and passes. a country apprehensive. the sky is like twilight i feel like i'm wandering in the kingdom of the dead it's raining sand. prayers of punctuated each day on the road i sleep while he converses with his god . amidst the wind blown sound appears the mythical city of babylon. in his delusions of grandeur saddam hussein emerged himself to be its king the heir to the throne

the president of the iraqi republic sat there are saying in one nine hundred eighty eight inaugurated the restored city of babylon first built by nebuchadnezzar between six o four and five sixty two b.c. . at the height of his power like the ancient kings before him. built his palace in the heart of the legendary city. his tower of babel crashed down around him in the dust of pride and ambition. his memory has been left to the ravages of time and the insults of his survivors.

potentially deadly blizzard taking aim for the northeast it's expected to hit stunning in a few hours from new york to maine we have team coverage of the storm. but what we're watching is the very heavy snow moving into boston proper earlier today it was very sticky you can see it start to become much more powdery down the line there's still a lot of snow out here a good place for snowball fight. piece and it is kind of pretty incredible day there and even record snowfall throughout much of it might still be slow to be driving lessons from emergency vehicles are exceptions.

the neighborhood international airport in the very heart of moscow. at the end of the road lies come the mecca of vatican and medina of the shia world. but something of god and other al qaeda is the real enemy of iraq and even of all the arab regions i don't believe several terrorist organizations have been exported by neighboring countries i don't know but they are responsible for so many victims since baghdad fell. you know at the end i would stress that most of the attacks have targeted the shia community cannot just be let out the g.a.'s. pilgrims are

well protected here all the offices and soldiers a shia. several million faithful including many from iran come every year to visit the mosques in karbala a boon for the holy city. religion is a river of gold as the saying goes. we don't know what it's obvious that when a country's native sons defend it things go better than when they're always better than an occupier. and invader always has trouble understanding the country they occupy and as the air proverb says no one knows the roads of mecca better than its own inhabitants a democrat shout i have it if i have it. it's this is. the main prayer takes place in the hussein most. the him i'm sermons a political resonance and

a broadcast throughout iraq and the shia world and. the shias today are imposing their numbers and their power. and. the prayers always end with cries to the glory of the prophet hussein the son of ali allegedly designated by mohammed to be his only successor. never care. but many on the underside a million shias were detained and many of them were assassinated then thrown into mass graves and center i myself your servant spent twelve years in iraqi jails my family only received news of me one or two years after i was released. i was even afraid of my own brother i thought he was an officer who come to interrogate me yes we suffered and the prisons were filled with shias for me when

they be. leaving kabbalah is like crossing a graveyard. everywhere all portraits of she amount has fallen for the glory of the prophet hussain mohammed there. was that. possible. on the baghdad and basra highway in the middle of the desert our faithful old taxi finally gives up the ghost. i feel suddenly vulnerable alone in the wilderness.

as if by magic a man appears from the sams to help us out perhaps this is the renowned desert hospitality. we had for a camp for the man who maintained the highway once they were all soldiers and saddam's army. when the americans came many deserted. and. without knowing who we are to make room for us to share that. with out of the massive iraqi army was hunger thirst and fatigue. every member of your family was taken hostage

a few deserted. you horrible in the days when they called people who ran away they were simply hanging with them one on one of you and i spent seven years in the army and it was very tough. in santa most days a soldier was paid two thousand dinos less than the bank he was carrying was worth we can definitely say we were really miserable. the highway splits the desert and on each side of the road to bask in the vast oil fields of rumaylah much known. more than half of the iraqi production is pumped from this burning desert a treasure chest within the sand. shale b.p. exxon mobil and the chinese cineplex of already got their hands on the bulk of it.

at last we reached bastrop where the euphrates and the tigris meet. travel is once called the city of venice of the south. who comes to kill us and destroy our country and good it before we said it the americans but the americans have gone and now my general so who else is continuing the job. that nobody knows of there's no work and the situation is unlivable i say yes it was better before. conversely if we talk about security and civic respect we can say it was a hundred percent better under saddam. today there's no respect for the citizens and as if we were no longer men that's the truth that's honestly what i feel. we are less and less respected before an iraqi could walk by this head held high

anywhere in the world and especially at home as long as the state was not affected or undermined things have changed a lot i can tell you the situation was much better before. the venice of the self was awash with detritus of all kinds half of the inhabitants are unemployed it's a humanitarian and social disaster area. here we have absolutely nothing. where we going but at that event in this oil rich country we can't find work. this is how we live the children of this country why is it fair does god accept this master is in the middle of all the country's oil wealth it's like the mother of oil but he doesn't seem to gain from it the inhabitants are poor and the streets are filled with the unemployed and it.

was once one of the richest cities in iraq today it seems to have been forgotten by both god and mankind because of oil is cruel indeed. and yet in the heart of the shantytowns is always given freely. and sweet offering . by our government isn't he in mind that if the government doesn't take care of the poor and is only there to save itself until its own pockets i do expect things to change what. i heard that no minister has taken the trouble to come and see us to ask how we survived or ask us if we. need and i think we have nobody to talk to.

and so since the americans left the poor and the powerless join the militia and the terrorist groups who would least provide money and protection. everywhere in the city of portraits of the she might i doubt saddam his radical troops feed on poverty. the road ends at our file on the banks of the persian gulf the end of our journey. from this is the outback oil terminal rising from the water far from terrorist attacks and on a constant military surveillance where iraq's fortune oil flows in and out. the

country's fortune and perhaps misfortune two. wars here have always been clothed in the same color black. and foul was at the mouth of the shuttle our best during where the tigris joins the euphrates forming the border with a round. on the iranian bank a gigantic portrait of the m.m. how many is there to taunt us a reminder that americans have gone leaving pandora's box wide open. when israeli army personally i never thought i know collaborated with the americans . which of what chile i work i am and always have been a taxi driving se. i still can't cross the country north to south general from south dakota and follow all taxi i go wherever i can find work i have that i don't

hesitate god be praised all i want to still live my. twenty days on the road perhaps one hundred checkpoints. with my friend khaled we've crossed a country which is officially no longer at war but where peace is not being restored a country divided by sectarian shia sunni and kurd communities a country where tara is a daily issue. from

zoho abil so there manya kook muscle to create for. baghdad bob alone kabbalah as far as i'll file we've traveled a road where danger is ever present. khaled was under the protection of his god and me maps of providence.

you know how sometimes you see a story and it seems so you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else and you hear or see some other part of it and realize that everything you thought you knew you don't know i'm tom harpur welcome to the big picture.

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for america international airport in the very heart of moscow.